


In A Rush

by Synthos



Series: A Stained Brush [2]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Dehumanization, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Mental Health Issues, Post-Dream No More Ending (Hollow Knight), Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:20:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23312272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synthos/pseuds/Synthos
Summary: Ghost has somehow survived the final fight, but on some level they knew they would. The Hollow Knight has also survived the final fight, which comes as a complete surprise. But Ghost is going to make the most of it.Hornet is fine, but tired. She's not going to be able to Hornet for a while.
Series: A Stained Brush [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1671364
Comments: 6
Kudos: 144





	1. Why So Quiet?

**Author's Note:**

> I usually dislike reading angst but now it's all I'm writing. I guess cause I know it'll get better. I'd never let me down, right?
> 
> Anyways, this was beta read by [ThunderDragonfruit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderDragonfruit/pseuds/ThunderDragonfruit), again, thank you.

It had been strange, just receiving something, for free, when geo had saturated all such interactions. Either that, or violence, or some kind of test. They always had to do something.

So when Iselda had shown up in front of them, and given them new writing supplies, without seemingly asking for anything in return, they’d been confused. It had been an anomaly in how these things normally happened. Things didn’t come to them, they had to go seek them out.

“No need. We’ve made more than enough, thanks to your map,” she said, and they understood. Something had been done. Giving her the map, in the event they ended up replacing their sibling instead of saving them, somehow counted as payment. They reabsorbed the geo into their body and the map they’d almost accidentally ruined and turned around to face their sibling.

Sibling. 

Hornet was a sibling. But she talked, and soul leaked out of her the few times they’d been forced to fight. She couldn’t survive a trek down into the abyss and even those brief moments inside the void egg had been nearly too much for her.

But the Hollow Knight, they were void. There was something strange going on with their shell that Ghost still couldn’t figure out, but they were formed from the same union that Ghost was, birthed in the same place.

And for whatever reason, they still weren’t talking back.

In the very beginning when their mask had been absolutely ruined due to who knew how long containing that hostile light, Ghost hadn’t been too worried when there had been no replies to their prodding.

It had put a damper on their excitement, the possibility to just  _ talk  _ with someone, without the need for gestures, or nail pointing, or staring until the message got across. But they could wait. Between the journey to Hallownest when they’d heard the cry, and the long adventure they’d had within its tunnels besides, they’d learned to wait. 

They needed to wait, especially since the attempt to ‘help’ the other had been a disaster.

At first, when the egg and the magic woven into it had faded away, and light had finally gone quiet, the call of the void, of home, of dreamless sleep had been irresistible, everything they’d ever wanted. But they had Will, and so many things left to do. 

Still, the relief they felt when the void far beneath had shuddered to rest had been enough. And it wasn’t just the void. The entire kingdom, without dreams trying to animate its husk, could finally go to sleep.

They’d laid there for a while trying, idly Focusing their mask back into something they could occupy, tendrils swarming around and gathering their charms, and nail and whatever else had scattered when the veil between dream and reality had been torn and they’d broken their shell. It was a good thing they had some soul left.

And then they’d touched something they were fairly sure didn’t belong to them, something familiar.

Carefully as to not disturb the progress on fixing the mask they drifting upwards and looked around and-

Hornet.

She shouldn’t be here.

Before they could fully descend into panic she twitched and slowly pushed herself upwards. Limbs shaking, she used her needle to stand up fully. Ghost eased, minutely. The void and the spells were gone, Hornet would be fine. They continued focusing on reassembling themselves when they happened across their next discovery. 

A mask that was barely holding itself together and a cracked and worn nail. Was one of their arms always missing? Ghost hadn’t had time to think in the fight with the blobs of infection flying around and rapid teleporting. Tense and in disbelief they wandered closer.

They were alive, but still, the void of their form trying to fill in the holes burrowed out by the infection and that they themselves created. But it wasn’t working. And even worse, the mask was leaking tiny bubbles, like their own did when they were close to shattering. And they were sure that the Hollow Knight did not have the will to force themselves to stay, or any lingering regrets to make them return. They had one duty, and it was fulfilled. 

The pull of the void had lessened, but it was still there, and Ghost knew if they didn’t do something that the other would be leaving very soon.

So they rushed, unthinking, for the mask to find a way to bind it, to make it hold until they could get to somewhere with soul. And it shattered in their hands.

There was a rush upwards as a shade, much larger than the one they left behind formed above them, white eyes blinked open and they stared at each other. And once again, the other was about to leave them.

There was a wild rippling as strings of silk shot towards the two of them. Ghost dodged on instinct, but the silk wasn’t aimed for them. The other, floating passively, was ensnared. The rest of the silk that wasn’t busy binding them shot out towards the walls of the temple and embedded themselves deeply.

It was like they were back at the beginning, the chains replaced with silks, and the Hollow Knight suspended.

“You should have waited,” Hornet spoke, tired, “If you had, I could have bound their mask temporarily”

Ghost wanted to argue they had no possible way of knowing that, nevermind they couldn’t speak, she always seemed to get what they were trying to say. But she was right. They’d rushed. They were scared, after so many incidents of nearly finding a sibling, but being too late, or having it be a lie. Nosk, the Ancient Basin, Greenpath. Even Hornet was complicit in this. But her reasons had been legitimate, as they knew intimately what would have happened had that light been unleashed into the world. And she was making up for it now, they supposed.

They looked at the scattered remains of the mask and at their larger sibling’s trapped form.

“They are going to need a new mask. This one is beyond repair,”

Well, at least they knew where they could get one of those. But before that, Hornet could bind masks, ‘temporarily’, but for now that was all they needed.

They drifted back to where their own was lying and hovered over it until Hornet noticed and came closer. She looked at it, eyes expressionless and Ghost began to wonder if it was a mistake until she knelt down and picked it up. Silk flowed much slowly from under her cloak and wrapped over and over around the crack in the middle reinforcing where Ghost themselves had tried to repair it. 

Eventually, it was finished into something they could occupy. They dropped their current form and felt themselves flow into it, the nearest valid container. All their senses shut off as they went about building a form while inside and when they finished and found themselves staring out of the mask, Hornet was the closest she’d ever been, hands with fine fibers over them holding their face up. They both froze for a moment before she pulled back and picked up her needle.

Ghost patted their mask where she’d held them while she turned around and started collecting the mask shard pieces into a small pouch.

“I assume you already know where to find the mask maker. I am hesitant to leave them entirely to you, but there are places I am needed in, now that the infection has permanently disappeared. For now, I leave them to you. If you feel as if it is too much for you, it is fine to leave them here until I finish. Then we can help them together,” Hornet said, and Ghost was not having that. A Sibling was right here, The Sibling, the one that had drawn them to this ruined kingdom, the final quest.

Hornet seemed to understand even if they weren’t projecting any specific words at her. 

“Very well then. I leave you with this: do not get too attached. Even if you do your best, there are some things beyond fixing,”

Then she left. And Ghost wasn’t having any of that. With enough soul and willpower, anything was possible. This room, what had transpired mere minutes ago, was proof of that.

So even if their first time trying to ‘help’ their sibling had been a mess and ended up with the other right back where they started, it had gone relatively smoothly after that. They’d journeyed all the way to the Queen’s Gardens which was now full of the regular mantises hunting down the diminished no-longer-infected ones. Well, the ones that hadn’t died off on their own. Ghost had never really understood how the traitor tribe’s relationship with the infection had worked.

They would have gone through Deepnest, except Hornet was probably there and they didn’t really feel like meeting her soon. They were sure there was a place where the mask maker’s area of Deepnest and the gardens met, but when they saw it, it was from the bottom and they’d never really gone back to check. And their map was with Iselda right now, so tracing it was out.

Eventually, they found it, climbed inside, placed the pouch of collected mask shards on the table, and waited as the mask maker paused and poured it out to examine it. They waited as he pieced it together to get a sense of what it looked like. They waited as a new one took form under his many hands.

When it was done, and all he apparently wanted in return were the shards, Ghost was brimming with the energy that accidentally shattering the previous mask had painfully stifled. They made their way back through the gardens into the crossroads, listening to the Old Stag speak of how everything seemed much lighter now.

The Hollow Knight was where Hornet had bound them. They hadn’t and couldn’t leave, and all of this was real.

They placed the mask down underneath that glowing gaze and got about cutting the silk. The giant shade slipped out before they were even halfway done. The roiling void stilled for a while, maybe remembering the earlier call downwards, to home. But there was a much nearer container nearby. 

Ghost watched as they poured into the mask, and kept pouring, ( _ there was so much, how did they grow so much? _ ), until eventually, they were all inside.

And then the body formed, tall and thin and regal.

But an arm was still missing, and the holes hadn’t gone away. Ghost didn’t know why they had expected them to go away.

_ Sibling _ , they whispered, pushing their thoughts outward in that ethereal tongue. The other didn’t seem like they had heard, standing upright, their back to Ghost, body swaying.

_ Sibling,  _ they repeated, a little louder, a little more forcefully. Maybe the other couldn’t hear them? There was still no response. They crept closer and tugged on the torn cloak-wings that hung off their back.

Their mask was fixed, but maybe their body was the problem?

The ensuing trip to the hot spring, which, honestly, Ghost needed as well, was done with a mix of scouting ahead to take out whatever’s ahead and returning and tugging at Hollow until they followed. 

The waters didn’t completely fix everything. What before had been a messy gash, with watery ink blank, now hardened. The arms stump which had been dripping bits of void, shifting and reforming also solidified. The other also seemed more relaxed. So it wasn’t a complete waste.

They decided to try again.

_ Sibling. _

The other wasn’t even looking at them, and what Hornet had said before she left drifted back to them.  _ Some things you can’t fix. _

Their mask was blank, but Ghost’s mask was equally blank and  _ they _ weren’t empty on the inside.

Maybe the other could hear them, but they couldn’t talk back. They’d lost an arm, even if they’d literally been chained and spelled still. It wasn’t a stretch to them possibly losing the ability to speak as well. The light’s ( _ hateful and so angry)  _ domain had been the mind. __

There were other ways of communicating. They tried not to let themselves feel disappointed. This had all turned out so much better than expected. Hornet was okay. They were okay. Their sibling was okay. No one was ever going to get infected again. The void had gone to sleep. There were so many new things to discover and this time they’d be doing it with a friend, a Sibling.

There were other ways of communicating, like writing. Except all of their tools that had anything to do with writing, they’d left up in the town. They could just go get it, but that would mean leaving Hollow behind. Which they didn’t feel comfortable doing so after they saw how weak they were currently without the infection powering them up. And they didn’t feel like forcing them to get up and follow along when even getting down here had taken so much out of them.

It seemed they’d be staying here a while.

Time would pass and every time Ghost felt restless, they’d venture slightly outside and release it burning up soul on shrieking, incidentally sending anything curious enough to come close running away.

Hollow didn’t move much. They would occasionally shift into another position until the lack of an arm would become apparent and they’d suddenly stop and return to how they were sitting. 

Ghost wished they could do something about it, help somehow. But they didn’t even understand how it had happened. Void didn’t work like this. They knew because something like this had happened to them, out in the wastes, when they were unarmed except for a worn-down nail and pure determination. Something, they didn’t know as they’d been too busy running, had taken a bite out of them and the rest of the void in their body had rearranged itself until they had another one. They’d come out of it smaller, overall, but they hadn’t lost function. Which was why what happened to Hollow was so strange. Was it the same thing keeping them from talking back?

Eventually, Ghost would realize that the spring had done all it could and if they wanted to go any further, they needed to talk to Hollow and find out what was going on with them. With their shell.

They got off the bench and made their way’s Hollow’s splayed out sleeping form. Feeling a little bit guilty, they patted at them until they woke up. 

_ Let’s go,  _ Ghost whispered, and it was basically confirmation that the other could hear them that pushed themselves up. They still seemed fragile, but no longer like they could break apart with a tap.

They made their way up through the crossroads and into the stag station since they didn’t see Hollow making that climb. The Old Stag seemed surprised to see Hollow, but the surprise was that they were traveling with Ghost, not their existence in itself. There were more bugs using the stagways now, somehow. And this was a surprise to Ghost who was pretty sure they’d met everyone there was to meet in Hallownest and most of them were either not mobile or had their own ways of getting around.

A trip and a ride up the elevator later, where they caught Hollow staring at the board by the building’s door, they were in Dirtmouth, the closest thing to home. They left Hollow to sit on the bench while they went to get their map. Elderbug was missing, and there were a lot more bugs walking around, as well as a lot of new open doors and lights shining out of windows. More to explore for them.

It truly sank in when they made their way into the map shop and found Iselda selling. To a bug that was not them. Things were really changing. They watched until the other left and then stepped back, hoping she knew what they wanted, considering how vague their last interaction was. Thankfully she did.

They got their map and wandered back outside, feeling the leftover commitment they hadn’t been able to squash bubble up. They were going to talk. To a Sibling.

_ Sibling _ , they whispered, the quietest, they’d ever said it. They sat on the bench next to them and took out the map and brush.

_ Write,  _ they said and pushed the paper at them. Hollow simply stared at, hand hovering uncertainty. They were about to insist again, when Iselda gave them other papers to write on, telling them they’d ruin the map if they wrote on the back of it. Which they really didn’t mind, they knew Hallownest by heart now. But maybe Hollow would want it when they recovered their strength.

_ Write,  _ they repeated and pushed the empty paper at them. After a while, Hollow accepted and put it onto their lap, brush held in their lap. Ghost watched attentively, not saying anything now that they’d done everything on their part. 

Eventually Hollow began to write.


	2. Regarding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The more things change, the more they stay the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I gleefully jump onto the Hollow Hurt/Comfort train. I hope I'm doing this right.

_Write,_ it was told.

But what was it to write?

Should it ask?

Usually what to write came after the order, but no further orders had come, which implied it was to write something on its own. 

But tools don’t write. Be it a nail, or a brush, or a vessel, they are only mediums through which another’s will was to be exercised.

But tools didn't think either, and it was doing plenty of that.

_Write,_ came the prodding again.

Some part of it trembled in frustration before swiftly being smothered.

_Do not feel._

It decided to draw on previous experiences like it was taught. There was always precedent. 

The king- _father-_ had so many more important things to do, than to be wasting time physically writing back a response to every inquiry and plea that made its way to that ivory throne. But the king trusted no one, ( _everyone had left_ ), but trust wasn't a factor when it came to vessels, only orders. 

It was taught to write, it was taught what to write, and then it was left alone, writing out platitudes to every desperate cry, orders to continue holding up for every frustrated demand for answers. Its name was used as a reaffirmation of hope.

The Hollow Knight.

_But it was not hollow._

It had never been expected to write something on its own, even word penned had been a predefined response to combinations of questions and who was asking those questions.

Unless.

It recalled a memory, near the end, near when it had been sealed.

A new order. 

_Report_.

The palace had nearly been deserted then. The king had long stopped overseeing its training, leaving it to assigned retainers and eventually the knights until they too had left.

It was told to oversee itself and report what had happened. A template had been scribbled down and provided but the details it had to fill itself. 

The king had stopped reading those, near the end, but it hadn’t been told to stop so it had kept making those.

It pulled itself back to the present.

Was that what the other vessel wanted? A report? About itself?

It looked down at itself, at the destruction wrought on its body. The holes and the scarring and the missing arm- _when had it gone missing_ -and so many other things broken and wrong inside itself.

Something ugly began to worm its way inside its chest, not unlike when it had been hosting the infection- _screamingblindingconsuming-_ and it forced it down.

And it began to write.

It wrote about its form. How damaged it was. All the missing pieces that were not immediately apparent. It couldn’t Focus anymore, it had tried in the spring, and it had nearly broken itself. It couldn’t fight. It couldn’t move far on its own. It couldn’t even mold soul, which meant its huge arsenal of learned spells were now useless. 

There had been a chance, as stiff and forgotten as it was, suspended there for an eternity, that it could have recovered. But the fight had destroyed it. The vessel slashing at it, it slashing at itself, Her using it as she pleased, bursting out of its form.

Its hands trembled but it carried on.

It couldn’t fight, couldn’t defend itself or others, but that had always been auxiliary. 

Its true purpose had been to seal. Nothing else mattered, as long as it could do this. It was why it was chosen when all of the others had been sealed away.

And it had failed.

_A cocoon,_ she’d called it, as she showed it images of that orange glow growing inside it until it burst, letting her out in her full glory, as she made it experience it, over and over.

_Soon enough_.

She alternated between treating it like the tool it was supposed to be, impassively repurposing it for her own needs, and treating it as an extension of its sire, twisting the love and thoughts and memories and tormenting it with them until it nearly broke and she went back to ignoring it.

As a vessel, it had failed. Not only it but the entire logic behind it, void imprisoning light, had failed. It was a tool without a will. And gods needed a will unbreakable to even be on the same level as them, let alone defeat them. Hollow or not, it was always going to fail.

It shifted its head slightly, just enough that it could see the other vessel. It had avoided looking at the other ever since it recognized it. At the temple. The vessel that had been left behind, just slightly too late. The vessel that it had expected to replace it, do what it couldn’t, only for them to go ahead and do the impossible.

The silence after had been deafening.

It looked back down.

It didn’t know what to write. This section was explicitly about its primary duty.

It asked about the integrity of the spells woven into its mask, into its core. The dreamer seals. The seals binding it to the egg, to Hallownest.

The seals to attract Her. 

The seals to keep Her.

All of it was gone. This was not even its original mask. That had shattered. This was entirely free from any magic. And the vessel had to know this, as it was the one that did this.

Regardless, it wrote this down as well.

The final part.

Orders.

For a moment, it was like it had returned to that moment when the egg had sealed, along with their fate, when the magic had activated and the heart it had been made to consume had summoned Her from thousands of minds to one.

It had been prepared. To face this threat to the ( _father’s_ ) kingdom. To seal it forever.

Before it had _known._

She had been amused at first. At what it was. At the fragile mind, she’d found herself invited to. She’d held it as it trembled in her grasp, love and insecurity and duty twisted into itself with a repetition of _donotthinkdonotfeeldonotthink._

And then she’d tried to leave the way she came only to find it sealed, and it had realized that it was now sealed in with Her. And it would be forever. This higher being that could see into the ugliest parts of itself.

_And it had felt terrified._ _It had never wanted this.  
_

The other vessel was waiting. 

Orders.

“ _Use the reports you’ve written above and cross-reference it with these papers to determine the next step. Fill it in, then do it. I do not have the time to be giving you orders,” the king had said, not even looking at the vessel. He had rarely looked away from his work those final days._

It had been another scribbled piece of paper, somewhat like the one they used when they wrote the letters. But instead of responses, it had orders. If its form was wavering, come to the workshop and have it reinforced. If it was having trouble defeating foes with spell that went down to nail, it was to spend the next day focusing on spells exclusively. 

On and on, a comprehensive list of responses and orders, that let it ‘operate’ itself. And it had known that it wouldn’t be seeing the king until the end after that.

The slates hadn’t included anything on what to do in the current situation, on what to do when _everything_ about it was broken, when the primary directive was long fulfilled, by something that was not them no less, but they didn’t need to. 

The king had made it clear from the very beginning what happened to tools that couldn’t fulfill their primary purpose.

_Regarding:_ _Hollow Knight_

_Action:_ _Discard._

_Cause(s):_ _Primary directive fulfilled._

_No possible alternative use_

_Broken: Too expensive to fix, replace instead_

It wrote, remembering when it wrote this exact combination of words about the last nail that it had outgrown, excluding the last line. It had then followed its own orders and headed to the smithy to request and be given a new one. It had returned the old one to a nailsmith and watched it destroyed and the metal repurposed.

Maybe that’s what would happen to it. Its void would be repurposed.

It paused at the last line. Expensive wasn’t the correct term. That would imply there was a cost, if high, that could be paid to restore it to prime form, disregarding why anyone would do so. 

But it knew that was not the case. The lattice of spells woven in and around its body, that accelerated its growth, was used to manipulate its body as needed was irreversibly warped, and its creator was long gone. There was no repairing it.

It crossed out the line.

_Regarding:_ _Hollow Knight_

_Action:_ _Discard._

_Cause(s):_ _Primary directive fulfilled._

_No possible alternative use_

~~_Broken: Too expensive to fix, replace instead_ ~~

_Broken: Can not fix, replace instead_

The report was done. 

It looked to the side. The other vessel had taken out the same map from earlier and was now drawing a path from the Queen’s Gardens - _mother-_ to … Deepnest? Well, the entrance through the mantis village couldn’t have been the only one, as Herrah had seemed to come and go with impunity.

Eventually, the other vessel noticed that it was done and put the map away, hands grabbing for the paper.

The creeping terror they’d put off with the clinical analysis of what should be done to them returned, and they handed them over with forcefully stilled hands.

All that was left to do was wait.

It looked away, and over at the town instead. A kingdom reduced to this, thanks to its failure, thanks to the flawed logic behind its very inception.

But the other vessel wasn’t flawed. The other vessel had slain what all thought could only be sealed. _It_ was the flawed one. 

It wondered what would have happened had the king noticed the other vessel, and discarded it instead. Could they have saved Hallownest? Would this town be the hub of trade and commerce to the outside world it had seen it be?

Or maybe they would have simply been discarded as well and the king would have kept on looking for a lack of will where there was always going to be some. Everything had been doomed from the start.

It didn’t get the chance to wonder more about what could have been, because it was interrupted by a piercing scream beside it. And it was tossed into memories of another such being screaming at it. But this was so much worse, She screamed into their mind, this was reverberating their very core. The world just kept finding ways to violate it deeper.

It curled inwards until it couldn’t anymore since it was the only thing in its mind. It and the screaming. It didn’t know what it did to it but it seemed to grow until it was threatening to crack its mind. Like Her. 

_No voice to cry out suffering._

It cried out.

And as abruptly as it had begun it cut off, and the sounds of the physical world streamed back in. It didn’t lift its head, simply listened, frozen, as the paper was ripped to pieces somewhere in front of it. 

There was a pause.

_Not beyond repair,_ came the whisper, in the same space where only moments before there had been liquid anger.

And then they left.

The wind rippled gently through the town as it waited for more.

“I am Iselda,” 

And it was grateful, for a message that did not assert itself inside its mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I went to play HK for a while and I realized they use a quill to draw on the map, not a brush. Before this could upend the entire verse I'd built based on that assumption, I remembered, quills, what? This is a world about bugs. Birds would be the size of wyrms, probably much bigger. So. Yeah.
> 
> Edit: Fixed a few things. Can't believe I deleted an in-universe strike-through as if it was a editorial one.


End file.
